


Kitchen Chatter

by BitterPill



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, Five's paranoia, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Klaus's terrible life choices, No one has communication skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29664084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BitterPill/pseuds/BitterPill
Summary: A simple conversation. (There is no such thing as a simple conversation in this family.)Set at a vague point during Season 1I just wanted to wind them up and watch their defence mechanisms bounce off each other.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	Kitchen Chatter

Tap

Tap

Tap tap tap

Tap

Tap tap taptap

Tap tap tap

Before he’s even really conscious of the sound, Five’s brain is checking for morse code, something broken, someone in hiding, patterns, secret messages. He has to wrangle his mind back under control and remind himself that, no, it’s none of those. His gaze cuts sideways. It’s _Klaus_.

And now he’s looking, Five doesn’t know how he had it tuned out. The tapping, the jiggling, the full body fidgeting of Klaus sitting at the kitchen table like he’s never been shown how to use a chair properly. Now he’s noticed it, he’ll never be able to un-notice it. He doesn’t want to move, the thread of the calculation he was following to its conclusion still dangling in front of him.

He reaches out and grabs the incessantly tapping arm. “Will you just stop?” he asks.

Klaus is statue still for a moment, startled, but it quickly flows out of him, replaced by a smile and movement and his attention fixed on Five.

Five immediately regrets his course of action. He should’ve just left. Klaus’ attention never leads to anything productive.

“Sorry Fivey,” Klaus grins, not meaning it. He flutters the fingers of his hand still trapped Five’s grip.

Five can feel the corresponding movement of tendons under his hand, and the non-movement of… something else. Five frowns and pulls Klaus’s arm closer.

“Woah, hey, careful,” says Klaus, pulled off his precarious perch. “I will be wanting that back, you know.”

Five ignores him. He palpates Klaus’s forearm with his thumbs, finding a solid disc lodged under the skin. Five looks up at Klaus. “What is this?” he demands.

A flicker of confusion before Klaus sees what he’s found, then the smile is back. “Oh, that.” He leans his head on his other hand, stretched ridiculously across the table but making it look comfortable. “Funny story, actually.”

“Do I look like I’m in the mood for a funny story?”

Klaus considers the question, because of course he does, giving Five a thoughtful look. “Mm, no. Your look says something along the lines of ‘murder’. Or maybe ‘I want coffee’. It’s so difficult to tell the difference with you!”

Five nods. “Right.” Keeping Klaus’s arm securely trapped, he reaches across the kitchen table to grab a knife and hold it threateningly over the suspicious disc under Klaus’s skin. It’s a butter knife, but he trusts it gets his point across.

Klaus’s immediate struggling to get his arm back brings with it a certain accomplishment of _finally_ getting Klaus to take something seriously.

“Five!” Klaus yelps as he tries to pull his arm back, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Tell me,” Five taps the disc with the knife, “What this is, where you got it. A tracker? Is someone following you?”

“A tracker? What? No, it’s not,” Klaus struggles half-heartedly, “That’s not it.”

Five leans over the table, bringing his face closer to Klaus’s. And hopefully Klaus can clearly read the ‘murder’ in it this time. “Then What. Is it?” he enunciates pointedly.

Klaus freezes again, his gaze drifts over Five’s shoulder, looking so intently that Five has to shrug off the feeling of someone standing behind him.

A breath of time, then Klaus groans and rolls his eyes as the tension leeches out of his body. “Fiiine,” he says like a child asked to share a toy he doesn’t want to. “It’s E.”

Now it’s Five’s turn to have a go on the confusion. “It’s what?”

“I was young,” says Klaus, flippancy restored, “Going through an experimental phase. E’s great I thought, why not inject it? Turns out it doesn’t stay liquid long enough, that’s why not!” He grins, free arm held out wide like he’s told a joke and is waiting for the well-deserved laughter.

“It’s a drug thing,” Five clarifies.

Klaus’s arm falls and his grin dims, dropping to something that for a split second just looks _tired_. “When isn’t it?”

From anyone else it would be too implausible a story. From Klaus it’s so plausible he almost considers it a double bluff. But no, Klaus isn’t and has never been Commission. Trackers and surveillance, looking over his shoulder to keep one step ahead of everyone isn’t his life. That’s all Five.

Five sighs and lets go of Klaus’s arm, sitting back and shaking his head. He’s exhausted. He can’t stop yet.

“Why do you do these things to yourself?” he mutters, not even really meaning to say it out loud.

Klaus shrugs as he rubs the circulation back into his forearm. “Isn’t that the million-dollar question?”

Silence rolls over the kitchen. Just what Five had wanted all along, although the dangling thread of his equation has long since blown away in the turbulence of… whatever just happened here. No matter, it’ll come back to him some other time. Which is just as well because,

“Sooo,” says Klaus, “ _Did_ you want coffee?”

Five gives him a sceptical look. “Are you offering? There’s none in the house.”

“We could go out,” says Klaus, “I can use my five-finger discount.” He waggles his fingers and his eyebrows. At Five’s lack of reaction he shrugs, “Or you can pay, I _really_ don’t mind.”

There’s a certain amused exasperation that comes with interactions with Klaus. At some point during his thirty-odd years without them, Five had managed to convince himself that he’d missed it. “Nah,” he says, rising from his seat, “I’m good.”

“Oh, well,” says Klaus to Five’s retreating back, “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Sure,” Five replies to his perpetually itinerant brother.

Never one to let anyone else have the final word if he can help it, Klaus calls, “Tschüss!”

**Author's Note:**

> Not pictured: Ben wishing his family could communicate like actual human beings for once.
> 
> Shout out to Brian for all the top tips he gave me on how not to take drugs. Hope you're still alive, Brian!


End file.
